David Hume - The Dark Ages

§ 4. Fall of Eutropius and the German Danger in the East (A.D. 398-400)

In these years, in which barbarians were actively harrying the provinces of the Illyrian peninsula and the eastern provinces of Asia Minor, concord and mutual assistance between east and west were urgently needed. Unfortunately, the reins of government were in the hands of men who for different reasons were unpopular and in all their political actions were influenced chiefly by the consideration of their own fortunes. The position of Eutropius was insecure, because he was a eunuch; that of Stilicho, because he was a German. So far as the relation between the two governments was concerned the situation had been eased for a time after the fall of Rufinus, and it was doubtless with the consent and perhaps at the invitation of Eutropius that Stilicho had sailed to Greece in A.D. 397. For the eastern armies were not strong enough to contend at the same time against Alaric and against the Huns who were devastating in Asia. The generals who were sent to expel the invaders from Cappadocia and the Pontic provinces seem to have been incompetent, and Eutropius decided to take over the supreme command himself. It was probably in A.D. 398 that he conducted a campaign which was attended with success. The barbarians were driven back to the Caucasus and the eunuch returned triumphant to Constantinople. 59His victory secured him some popularity for the moment, and he was designated consul for the following year.

The brief understanding between the courts of Milan and Byzantium had been broken as we saw by the attitude of the eastern government during the revolt of Gildo. There was an open breach. When the news came that Eutropius was nominated consul for A.D. 399, the Roman feelings of the Italians were deeply scandalised. A eunuch for a consul — it was an unheard-of, an intolerable violation of the tradition of the Roman Fasti.

Omnia cesserunt eunucho consule monstra

wrote Claudian in the poem in which, at the beginning of the year, he castigated the minister of Arcadius. 60The west refused to recognise this monstrous consulship. 61It was perhaps hardly less unpopular in the east.

The Grand Chamberlain, confidently secure through his possession of the Emperor’s ear, had overshot the mark. His position was now threatened from two quarters. Gaïnas, the German officer who under the direction of Stilicho had led the eastern army back to Constantinople, had risen to the office of a Master of Soldiers. 62It is probable that he maintained communications with Stilicho, and his first object was to compass the downfall of Eutropius.

Less dangerous but not less hostile was the Roman party, which was equally opposed to the bedchamber administration of Eutropius and to the growth of German power. It consisted of senators and ministers attached to Roman traditions, who were scandalised by the nomination of the eunuch to the consulship in A.D. 399 and alarmed by the fact that some of the highest military commands in the Empire were held by Germans. The leader of the party was Aurelian, son of Taurus (formerly a Praetorian Prefect of Italy), who had himself filled the office of Prefect of the City.

Gaïnas had some supporters among the Romans. The most powerful of his friends was an enigmatical figure, whose real name is unknown but who seems to have been a brother of Aurelian. Of this dark person, who played a leading part in the events of these years, we derive all we know from a historical sketch which its author Synesius of Cyrene cast into the form of an allegory and entitled Concerning Providence or the Egyptians. This distinguished man of letters, who was at this time a Platonist — some years later he was to embrace Christianity and accept a bishopric — was on terms of intimacy with Aurelian and was at Constantinople at this time. 63The argument is the contest for the kingship of Egypt between the sons of Taurus, Osiris and Typhos. Osiris embodies all that is best in human nature. Typhos is a monster, perverse, gross, and ignorant. Osiris is Aurelian; Typhos cannot be identified, 64and we must call him by his allegorical name; the kingship of Egypt means the Praetorian Prefecture of the east.

In the race for political power Typhos allied himself with the German party, who welcomed him as a Roman of good family and position. Synesius dwells much on his profligacy, and on the frivolous habits of his wife, an ambitious and fashionable lady. She was her own tirewoman, a reproach which seems to mean that she was inordinately attentive to the details of her toilet. 65She liked public admiration and constantly showed herself at the theatre and in the streets. Her love of notoriety did not permit her to be fastidious in her choice of society, she liked to have her salon filled, and her doors were not closed to professional courtesans. Synesius contrasts her with the modest wife of Aurelian, who never left her house, and asserts that the chief virtue of a woman is that neither her body nor her name should ever cross the threshold. This is a mere rhetorical flourish; the writer’s friend and teacher, Hypatia the philosopher, whom he venerated, certainly did not stay at home. He was probably thinking of the piece of advice to women which Thucydides placed in the mouth of Pericles.

The struggle against the German power in the east began in the spring of A.D. 399. It was brought on by a movement on the part of Ostrogoths in Phrygia, but we have no distinct evidence to show that it was instigated by Gaïnas. 66These Ostrogoths had been established as colons 67by Theodosius the Great in fertile regions of that province (in A.D. 386), and contributed a squadron of cavalry to the Roman army. The commander, Tribigild, bore Eutropius a personal grudge, and he excited his Ostrogoths to revolt. The rebellion broke out just as Arcadius and his court were preparing to start for Ancyra, whither he was fond of resorting in summer to enjoy its pleasant and salubrious climate.

The barbarians were recruited by runaway slaves and spread destruction throughout Galatia, Pisidia, and Bithynia. Two generals, Gaïnas and Leo, a friend of Eutropius — a good-humoured, corpulent man who was nicknamed Ajax — were sent to quell the rising.

It was at this time that Synesius, the philosopher of Cyrene, who had come to the capital to present a gold crown to Arcadius on behalf of his native city, fulfilled his mission and used the occasion to deliver a remarkable speech “On the office of King.” 68It may be regarded as the anti-German manifesto of the party of Aurelian 69with which Synesius had enthusiastically identified himself. The orator urged the policy of imposing disabilities on the Germans in order to eradicate the German element in the State. The argument depends on the Hellenic but by no means Christian principle that Roman and barbarian are different in kind and therefore their union is unnatural. The soldiers of a state should be its watchdogs, in Plato’s phrase, but our armies are full of wolves in the guise of dogs. Our homes are full of German servants. A state cannot wisely give arms to any who have not been born and reared under its laws; the shepherd cannot expect to tame the cubs of wolves. Our German troops are a stone of Tantalus suspended over our State, and the only salvation is to remove the alien element. 70The policy of Theodosius the Great was a mistake. Let the barbarians be sent back to their wilds beyond the Danube, or if they remain be set to till the fields as serfs. It was a speech which if it came to the ears of Gaïnas was not calculated to stimulate his zeal against the Germans he went forth to reduce.

The rebels, seeking to avoid an engagement with Leo’s army, turned their steps to Pisidia and thence to Pamphylia, where they met unexpected resistance. 71While Gaïnas was inactive and writing in his reports to Constantinople that Tribigild was extremely formidable, Valentine, a landowner of Selge, gathered an armed band of peasants and slaves and laid an ambush near a narrow winding pass in the mountains between Pisidia and Pamphylia. The advancing enemy were surprised by showers of stones from the heights above them, and it was difficult to escape as there was a treacherous marsh all around. The pass was held by a Roman officer, and Tribigild succeeded in bribing him to allow his forces to cross it. But they had no sooner escaped than, shut in between two rivers, the Melas and the Eurymedon, they were attacked by the warlike inhabitants of the district. Leo meanwhile was advancing, and the insurrection might have been crushed if Gaïnas had not secretly reinforced the rebels with detachments from his own army. Then the German troops under his own command attacked and overpowered their Roman fellow-soldiers, and Leo lost his life in attempting to escape. 72Gaïnas and Tribigild were masters of the situation, but they still pretended to be enemies.